


open at the close

by pipecleanerFlowers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3721636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipecleanerFlowers/pseuds/pipecleanerFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inside the spilling meteor shower (you wanted me too).</p><p>for the Arc V 30 Day, prompt: fireworks</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> really late for this prompt but ayyy I'm here, and w a rarepair to boot! (but what did anyone expect, lbr)

The way his profile lights up against the dark, scowl in place, eyes flinching with every explosion of colour, is distracting.

The bench is cool as Serena tightens her grip on the edge of the wooden panels, and she wonders why Akaba Reiji ever thought a celebration was a good idea when there was so much more to do, so much more to fix beyond taking down the Profes-- Akaba Leo. She shakes her head, bangs falling in her eyes. Her hair’s grown out since that day, when they were all declared winners, declared Reiji’s new Lancers -- none of them liked it then (she’s sure none of them like it now, either).

“You don’t like them either,” she notes, turning her gaze back to the multicoloured sky, watching the crackles and sparks and trying not to think about the way Academia crumbled among the same sounds, the same booms and claps, how the screams weren’t of delight and wonder but of pain.

He glances toward her, scowl never dropping as it creases between his brows, into the bridge of his nose. “They’re pointless, and loud.”

He flinches again, a twitch in his right eye and a slight hunch of his shoulders before he forces them to relax. The hard, rigid lines of his posture give it away: he isn’t comfortable here, even in Standard, even when all their threats have been eliminated (even when Akaba Leo is dead by his own son’s hands, so why do they still not trust Reiji? Why does this all feel so wrong?).

“It doesn’t feel like we should be celebrating,” Serena says, and she’s glad they chose a spot far off from the crowds, from the festivities, from the stalls alight with lanterns with the tang of grilled fish and too-sweet candy apples in the thick, humid air.

“It doesn’t,” Shun agrees. “We should be…” he fumbles, trying to find the right word, hands clenched over his knees. “We should be mourning.”

Ruri’s back, with the rest at the pier, and if Serena squints she can see her hair bounce in the crowd alongside the rest of the Lancers -- the ones who are happy to be back, happy the war is over and they can return to their lives in Standard, the only place that wasn’t hit as hard as the rest, the only place that doesn’t have years of rebuilding ahead of it.

Serena tries not to envy them.

Instead she watches Shun turn his eyes back up to the sky, irises alight with colours that don’t suit him. “I’m glad you’re still here,” she says softly as the last of the fireworks crackle out and the crowd below them cheers and clap into the sudden silence.

“Are you going back to Fusion?”

“I don’t want to, but I have to if I want to make sure it doesn’t turn back. And you’re going to rebuild Heartland, and Reiji’s going to shut all the gates, and--” Thinking about it hurts. Just when she was getting comfortable with the Lancers, with new comrades, with Shun…

She’d be alone again, locked off from everyone else on an island she despised.

“He’s not,” Shun says. “He said that his father had a good idea going. Horrible, terrifying execution. But, an idea. He wants to make the gates accessible.”

“Really?” she asks, wondering if it sounded as desperately hopeful as she thought it did.

“Really.”

“Then--”

“We can still see each other.”

Serena breathes for the first time that night, worries fading, loneliness disappearing along with the smoke from the display. “We can still see each other, “ she repeats, quieter. “That’s…” she can’t find the word, can’t grasp at anything that can possibly say how wonderful that is. But Shun nods, and his lips aren’t scowling anymore.

“Yeah, it is. We won’t be alone.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments? <3


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